Well I for one am one of those unapologetic Wikipedians who "inject their national and identity politics into the movement". I'm a fan of the "Be Bold" concept, bigly.
On Fri, Feb 3, 2017 at 1:00 AM, MZMcBride <z...@mzmcbride.com> wrote: > Hi Yair, > > I agree with your underlying sentiment. When we look at threats facing the > Wikimedia movement, I continue to think that the risk of people being able > to inject their national and identity politics into the movement is pretty > great. While I may personally agree with many of the views being put > forward, as you note these types of actions have the very real potential > to create an unhealthy division among contributors and others. > > Wikimedia is a global movement and many people in the world have strongly > held and diametrically different views about gay rights, abortion, free > speech, the role of women, etc. Those views should rarely be relevant to > creating free educational content. I don't think it's appropriate for > Wikimedia to take stands on these issues. If staff of the current > iteration of Wikimedia Foundation Inc. want to make such statements and > take such positions, that is technically their prerogative, absent > intervention from the Board of Trustees, however it certainly behooves > other Wikimedian to point out what a bad idea it is. > > To put it another way: there are people who work at Wikimedia Foundation > Inc. who voted for Donald Trump for president. While you may > disagree with his policies and these staffers' decision to support him for > president, needlessly and divisively injecting this kind of politics into > the workplace is neither healthy nor appropriate, in my opinion. > > Yair Rand wrote: > >Three days ago, the WMF put out a statement on the Wikimedia blog > >explicitly urging a specific country to modify its refugee policy, an area > >that does not relate to our goals. There was no movement-wide prior > >discussion, or any discussion at all as far as I can tell. > > I guess this is referring to > <https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/01/30/knowledge-knows-no-boundaries/>. > > In terms of various people at Wikimedia Foundation Inc. attempting to speak > for the Wikimedia movement, there's also <https://policy.wikimedia.org/>. > I've raised the lack of attribution and the "veneer of authority and > legitimacy" issue at <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Public_policy>. > At least the recent blog post was signed by Katherine. That's better than > some of these other essays. > > MZMcBride > > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ > wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
